


the way they seem is something else.

by thedestroycr



Series: ColdFlash Week Fall 2019 [3]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: M/M, Metahuman Leonard Snart, Post-Oculus Leonard Snart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2019-09-25
Packaged: 2020-10-28 08:07:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20775296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedestroycr/pseuds/thedestroycr
Summary: They told him Snart had died a hero. A Legend. He'd mourned, and while Barry had never found the courage to admit he'd loved the thief, he'd finally started to try to move on.Then Leonard Snart walked into STAR Labs, alive and fundamentally changed by the Oculus explosion. And he was still unfairly attractive.





	the way they seem is something else.

**Author's Note:**

> this is a day late and it's pressing me but alas i was super busy yesterday and couldn't finish it fast enough lmao!! this one feels rushed to me and i'm hmmmmm about it but i wanted to get something up for coldflash week prompt day 3: len's oculus powers so enjoy lmao

They’d all been surprised when Leonard Snart walked into the cortex bold as brass, as though he hadn’t been pronounced dead by the rest of his team, as if Barry hadn’t spent months quietly mourning him while the rest of the team moved on.

There’d been endless tests of course, Caitlin snapping to attention the moment shock wore off and ushered the bitching but amenable thief through a gamut of blood profiles and exams to detail out every possible change in his body that the Oculus might have caused. Barry deftly caught the urine sample jar from her hands before the doctor breached that particular topic, cheeks hot at the thought.

Cisco spent most of that time rapid-firing questions about how it felt to be dead, and Barry secretly thought his best friend was lucky Snart didn’t have the cold gun on him. He didn’t snap, not once, while the pair of scientists hovered and poked and prodded at him - but there was a coiled tension throughout. Snart’s shoulders pinched in just a little, the line of his mouth a shade too thin and his biting retorts sounding flat to the speedster’s ears.

Snart had said nothing to Barry beyond the sardonic greeting he’d tossed carelessly into the room as he'd stepped into STAR Labs. In fact, the longer Barry trained his gaze on the sharp profile of the ex-Legend's face, he realized that Snart hadn't even looked at him. Not once.

So Barry tried to make himself useful somewhere else. 

Gideon couldn’t reach the Waverider no matter how many times the speedster asked her, and the communicator every Legend carried had been smashed during the struggle with the Time Masters. The burner phone Lisa had used all those months ago had been disconnected, Barry was hesitant to even consider reaching out to the other Rogues left behind after Zoom’s interferences and the mess that had been Savitar. So, until Sara decided to bring the gang home, Leonard Snart was stuck with them.

A fact the man in question was less than pleased by.

“I don’t see why I have to sit around and play house with a bunch of do-gooders when Central City is ripe for the taking. It’s been… months? Years? Since I last had a big score. I’d hate to get  _ rusty _ .” Snart drawled, a cagey sort of tension to him where he stood on the precipice of leaving, one foot out the cortex doors.

"Give or take about a year and two months, our time." Cisco piped up, attention on the tablet in his hands as he ran simulations on Snart’s medical data. "Don't know how long it's been for you Cold-"

"A while." He ground out between clenched teeth and Barry focused on the white knuckle fists at his sides. Tried to stamp down on the desperate part of him that wanted to smooth the thief’s hands between his own, lend a comforting touch that wouldn’t be rebuffed.

Eventually they manage to convince Snart to remain at the Labs - they had enough spare rooms going, and set him up in Harry’s old bunks. Which is where Barry found him a few hours later, Caitlin and Cisco long gone home for the evening and the hero not in the mood to patrol the city alone.

Leonard’s back was to him when he stepped in, hesitant and nervous and chose to remain hovering in the doorway that actually cross the threshold. The thief looked distracted where he stood before one of the large glass tables, calculated gaze locked onto the palms of his hands as though they were a puzzle he needed to solve. Barry took the chance, unwatched and uninterrupted, to simply observe.

Snart looked tired.

The coldness that he wore like a second skin was frayed at the edges, some of the bite missing from his bark. Barry hesitated to say the man was softer now, but something had changed him during his time aboard the Waverider. Time spent being a hero. Saving the timelines, the world, all the worlds.

And the new lines to his face, the greying hairs at his temples somehow made Leonard seem more distinguished than old. He was still attractive. Still cool and infuriating and sarcastic and Barry still loved him.

“You’ve grown some manners in my absence kid.”

The sudden voice startled him, Barry’s feet tripping over themselves as he took a tentative few steps towards the other. “What?”

Leonard twisted a little to throw him a look over his shoulder, one eyebrow raised as if to say ‘really? You wanna go there?’, “Past you would’ve sped in without a care - now you’re like a puppy waiting to be let in from the  _ cold _ .”

“I was- I never…. You looked like you wanted to be alone!” Barry eventually managed to get out, but despite the sentiment behind the words he took ever bolder paces until he came to a stop at the other’s side. Then what Leonard had said sunk in and he groaned softly, “And to think I missed the puns. They’re still awful.”

Smirk in place, hand pressed to his chest with an air of mock coyness, Snart let his words drawl softly together, “Aww how sweet, you missed me Scarlet?”

Heat flooded his cheeks and Barry ducked his face away from the older man, “Shut up.”

Leonard remained silent after the snapped words and when Barry risked a look back over, his attention was no longer on the speedster or his embarrassment, though a smile lingered around the shape of his mouth.

A smile that faded when Barry bumped his shoulder against the other’s, tone gentle, “What’s wrong though - I wasn’t lying, you looked like something was bothering you.”

He watched, patient, as Snart seemingly turned multiple responses over in his mind before settling on, “Something’s different. I couldn’t place it when I woke up - an itch under my skin that I can’t scratch, but I’m sure now. I feel… wrong.”

It was far more open and honest an answer than he’d been expecting, but served to do nothing more than confuse Barry. He’d gone through the results himself, spent an hour debating back and forth with the others about them. There’d been nothing. Less than nothing, even. Everything down to Snart’s very DNA was exactly the same as it had been before leaving for Rip’s crew. 

It meant the man hadn’t aged a day, genetically speaking, even if the wear and tear managed to show in his features.

“But there isn’t anything, I mean, you’re healthier than expected for y’know… having been exploded by an intradimensional time field-”

“ _ Everything _ is wrong Flash, I don’t care if you all think I’m lying, or are trying to keep it from me - think I’m trying to pull some kind of angle. I’m tired and I just want answers.” Leonard cut across him violently, suddenly, and Barry felt a buzz of anger all his own. 

"But nothing is different about your DNA, no meta gene, no traces of the Speedforce, not even dark matter particles. _ Nothing! _ " Barry snapped, frustration flaring at the dissatisfied glare being thrown his way. Caitlin was thorough, and they'd done their part no matter how ungrateful Leonard was going to be about the entire situation.

"Then care to explain this?" And then the thief moved.

Barry could only watch as the table shattered beneath Snart’s palms, glass punching into the man’s skin. Shock held him in place, all the speed in his body caged by the darkly determined look the man shot him. Blood spattered slowly to the floor and stained the shards of glass there, the only sound their harsh breathing in the still silence.

“What the hell are you doing?” It exploded from his chest and Barry’s voice shook with barely restrained horror, concern bleeding into the edges. 

But Snart simply clenched his fists, once, twice, not a single sound of pain escaping him despite the damage he was surely adding to his already wounded hands. Lightning gathered at Barry’s heels and he was ready to rush the idiot down to Caitlin, beg her to help him, remembered at the last second that she’d gone  _ home _ , when the air shifted around them. No, not around them. Around  _ Snart _ .

It shimmered, faster and faster, waves of air shifting like heat from the tarmac on a scorching summer day. That wasn’t it either though. A sub-level hum resonated in Barry’s ears and it was familiar, felt like static against his skin and the air was vibrating. Particles moving impossibly fast. Smelt of ozone. 

And then the glass began to move too, shard clinking against each other as they lifted in slow motion - time suspended in a way he’d come to associate with the Speedforce, with the power in his atoms. But this wasn’t his doing.

Hazel eyes met cold blue.

\-------

“How big a range do you think it has?” Caitlin asked, her expression rapidly shifting from concerned at the thought of the violent display of powers (checked Leonard’s hands herself for evidence of injury and found none) to intrigued at the possibilities, “Is it just what you personally manipulate or are you capable of reversing time on anything?”

“And how’s it work? Are you controlling the Speedforce? vibrating the atoms of whatever you touch on a frequency to match their structure - but reversing the polarity and undoing the destruction of their bonds?” Cisco cut across with his own theories shining in tired eyes, and Barry sort of regretted calling the pair of them back so late. Snart hadn’t wanted him to call them at all, but he hadn’t given the thief a chance.

Caitlin shushed him as she called up the blood panel from earlier in the day, searching for evidence of the changes that surely had to have happened - even with the lack of dark matter particulates,  _ something _ had to be in his system. Palms pressed to the table at Cisco’s elbow, she aimed another question over at him, “Could you turn back the clock, as it were, for hours? Days?”

Snart shrugged a shoulder, indifference flattening out his features, “Haven’t exactly got a manual here Doc.”

She nodded slowly to herself before reaching down to tip Cisco’s mug from the table, porcelain shattering explosively across the floor. Barry made an aborted move to catch it, Speedforce gathering at his mind to watch its descent in slow motion, before time dilated again. 

“That was my favourite mug, man.”

No one paid Cisco any mind, attention narrowed in on Snart as the man’s face shifted, brows furrowed in concentration. A large fragment of the mug shifted, rocked from side to side for a brief moment, before stillness settled again.

Cisco let out a pained sound, mouth working into a full-blown pout, tone forlorn, “I really loved that mug.”

Sheepish and a little mollified, Caitlin quickly laid her hand on his shoulder with a wince, “Sorry.”

Something crossed Leonard’s eyes, a dark emotion that Barry couldn’t place before it was gone and disinterest took over once again. But it felt like an echo of a sentiment the speedster was intimately familiar with, that he’d become some kind of lab rat, dismissed and forgotten in favor of science.

They threw a few ideas down into their notes, and with some gentle encouragement, Barry managed to convince everyone to call it a night. He watched Snart’s back retreating down the corridor towards his new rooms and wondered if they’d come back the next day to find that the man had spirited himself away in the night.

A fear that proved unfounded.

Leonard emerged from his room day after day, let Cisco drag him into long winded debates about the limitations and potential of his powers, surprising everyone involved with the depth of his scientific understanding. Eventually, inevitably where their collective consciousness of nerd was concerned, those particular conversations slowly descended into heated arguments over which show had a greater intellectual basis for time travel.

Even Caitlin wormed genuine smiles from the thief, prodded in all her blunt wonder until Leonard was regaling them all with tales from the Waverider. Barry didn't miss how he took care to mention Stein and the new half of Firestorm, never a bad word to say about the pair. He caught them quietly talking one afternoon, an anniversary Ronnie never got to share with her, Snart awkward where Cait had her arms wound around his sides, face pressed into his chest as her shoulders twitched with the force of her sobs. Noted how Leonard gently ran a hand between her shoulder blades.

And what surprised Barry most was how… unsurprising it was.

How long had he spent pleading and raging against them all in equal part for daring to doubt that there was good in the thief?

So why did he feel hollow to finally see his stalwart belief come to fruition.

\--------

"You're totally crushing on the man Barr."

“What? Don’t be ridiculous.” But a telling flush started to rise across his cheeks as Barry turned his back to Cisco and tried to concentrate on the treadmill as it started up again.

His friend tsked at the back of his throat, “It’s okay man I support you - I mean it’d be a bit hypocritical of me to shame right?” He paused, turned slowly with a finger tapping against his chin and a thoughtful expression on his face, voice distorted a little by the Speedforce as Barry ran, “Y’know, now Snart’s basically a good guy, d’you think me and Sister Cold could-”

“Finish that sentence and I’ll force you to rebuild my cold gun so I can freeze your hands off.”

Barry tripped at 300mph and slammed into the thick padded wall at the back of the training room, and while it stung he was mainly hoping that Leonard hadn’t heard the start to that particular conversation. The man didn’t look like he had, signature smirk curving across his lips and Barry let himself relax a fraction as he pulled himself up and out of the pile of styrofoam that kept him broken bone free. “You and Caitlin finished up?”

They’d been trying to expand the field Leonard could manipulate, and so far practice made perfect - his powers could warp time around a 20 foot radius, and go back to almost an hour (Cisco had greatly appreciated the reheated burrito he’d forgotten about). 

The good mood vanished.

Cisco took the flat look Snart graced him as a hint to make himself scarce, and spun on his heels without even a good luck. And then the disapproval was leveled his way and Barry felt himself swallow tightly.

“Doc. Snow happened to let slip your little idea. Can’t say I agree with it, at all in fact, and since it’s my life you insist on meddling with I’d appreciate it if you stopped.” And Barry had forgotten, stupidly, how cold Snart’s voice could get. How angry and bitter his mouth could twist on words. 

But he’d been raised stubborn. Barry set his jaw, arms folded across the chest of his STAR Labs sweater, “Why should I? I’m trying to give you a fresh start! You’ve earned it, can’t you see that?” 

He’d approached Joe with his idea first, and after the inevitable shouting match, the same old arguments over how Leonard wasn’t to be trusted, how he was a killer and a thief - how he’d kidnapped his best friends and threatened them multiple times - eventually his foster father had agreed. Really, really begrudgingly. Because if he could accept Oliver Queen and his take on heroics, if he could believe in second chances and making up for past mistakes, then how could he argue?

So the Flash had broken into the CCPD, cornered Captain Singh and wrangled a pardon on behalf of the ex-thief. “You’re a hero, you’ve saved lives.”

He’d been hoping to make it a surprise one day, when the Captain had stopped laughing at the idea, and actually tried to make it happen with the DA. But secrets were a little hard to come by where Team Flash was concerned.

“I didn’t ask to be made a hero Barry! Again and again you put me up on a pedestal and you asked me to be good, to do good, twisted my head around until I thought that maybe I could. That Rip and his suicidal mission would fix things. Make me the good man you wanted.” Snart was breathing heavy, eyes burning with a near manic intensity Barry had never seen before.

“I almost got Mick killed. I stole and I hurt people, and the one time I make the sacrifice play, think that maybe I can wipe the slate clean and die with a clear conscience? I get stuck with this.”

His hand shook and the treadmill behind them startled to life again, the foam in the corner righting itself as though Barry had never collided with it. He watched with cautious eyes as Cisco walked backwards into the room once more, mouth moving with words he had spoken, and then even further - back hours and hours, Cisco leaving the lights flickering off as Barry’s running room shifted back to the middle of the night.

It was unsettling. The unchecked power Leonard had coursing in his body and Barry felt a little sick.

“I could do so much damage with these abilities.”

“You could do so much good too!” Barry rounded on the other, hands thrown out around them, “You could stop a fire, save someone from a speeding car - anything, and what? You think it picked the wrong person? That you shouldn’t get the chance when you’re the one who deserves it most?”

Snart remained silent, jaw working hard enough that Barry could hear teeth grinding past the other with the force of his fury, so he pressed his advantage. Closed the gap between them carefully, one step at a time, until he could reach out and unclench the older man’s fists.

Linked their fingers, and squeezed.

“I’ve made a ton of mistakes too Leonard. I’ve killed people, hundreds of strangers, people I’ve cared about have suffered because of how selfish and stupid and reckless I can be. But every time I’ve tried to make it right. Tried to fix things. They’ve forgiven me. They’ve let me  _ try _ and if I can have those chances… why can’t you?”

He heard Snart’s breathing slow, watched some of the anger holding tight to his shoulders relax inch by inch. Felt a cautious squeeze in return at their joined hands. Barry knew his eyes were red, always cried when emotions got too much - too angry or too sad, and for once he didn’t hate how easily he showed them. Because Leonard needed to understand. He  _ had _ to understand.

“You are one of the best men I’ve ever met.”

He meant to say more. He wanted to say so much more, but he couldn’t.

A warm mouth pressed insistently against his own, lips softer than he’d ever imagined (and yeah, Barry had pictured this moment an embarrassing amount over the years). They took the time to explore the other’s mouth, and Barry let Len take control of it, felt wetness of tears down his own cheeks where they finally fell. It was slow and gentle, a tentative question that Barry was happy to answer.

They kissed until they couldn’t breathe, until their mouths parted on soft little gasps that were exhaled into the millimeters of space between them. He met Len’s gaze, the certainty there, and smiled. A tension he’d felt building ever since the man had walked back into his life weeks ago finally snapped.

"You gonna make me spin back the clock to get a repeat performance, Scarlet?" And man was that cocksure smirk infuriatingly attractive, Barry thought to himself as he dragged Len back in by the fabric of his henley to steal another kiss. And another, and another and another until their teeth started to click on their smiles, laughter bubbling up in his throat.

"You’re literally the worst."

**Author's Note:**

> as always thanks for reading!! and i can be found @actualraptcr on twitter and actualvenom on tumblr <3


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